KALAIN HO­SEIN

Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

T&T has record­ed its sec­ond Mon­key­pox case with­in 48 hours.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, the Min­istry of Health (MoH) ad­vised that a sec­ond case of the Mon­key­pox virus was con­firmed via lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing, and the pa­tient is a young adult male.

While the min­istry did not in­di­cate if this most re­cent pa­tient was linked to the first case de­tect­ed on Tues­day, a mid­dle-aged male with re­cent trav­el his­to­ry, the rel­e­vant Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health is con­duct­ing an epi­demi­ol­o­gy in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The MoH said it has ini­ti­at­ed the lo­cal pub­lic health re­sponse, which in­cludes home iso­la­tion and con­tact trac­ing for the pa­tient.

Ac­cord­ing to the MoH, Mon­key­pox can cause var­i­ous signs and symp­toms. While some peo­ple have mild symp­toms, oth­ers may de­vel­op more se­vere symp­toms and need care in a health fa­cil­i­ty.

Those at high­er risk for se­vere dis­ease or com­pli­ca­tions in­clude preg­nant women, chil­dren and im­muno­com­pro­mised peo­ple.

The MoH said the most com­mon symp­toms of Mon­key­pox in­clude fever, headache, mus­cle aches, back pain, low en­er­gy, and swollen lymph nodes. This is fol­lowed or ac­com­pa­nied by the de­vel­op­ment of a rash which can last for two to three weeks. The rash can be found on the face, palms of the hands, soles of the feet, eyes, mouth, throat, groin, and gen­i­tal and/or anal re­gions of the body. The num­ber of le­sions can range from one to sev­er­al thou­sand.

While Mon­key­pox vac­cines ex­ist in T&T, the Na­tion­al Im­mu­ni­sa­tion Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­so­ry Group re­viewed the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s in­ter­im guide­lines for Mon­key­pox vac­ci­na­tions at the end of 2022. It rec­om­mend­ed that avail­able vac­cines be ad­min­is­tered to those who are close con­tacts of con­firmed pos­i­tive cas­es that are 18 or old­er but not preg­nant and/or breast­feed­ing and as a post-ex­po­sure pre­ven­ta­tive vac­ci­na­tion.

The MoH added that on­ly those who meet their cri­te­ria would be el­i­gi­ble, and a mass vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign would not be utilised.

The MoH placed an in­dica­tive or­der with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion in Ju­ly 2022, with 1,400 Mon­key­pox vac­cines ar­riv­ing in the coun­try on De­cem­ber 14, 2022.

The MoH said an ad­di­tion­al 1,400 vac­cines were sched­uled to ar­rive in the coun­try in the near fu­ture.